soon as they did, he grunted, and the glamour hiding Aerin faded to leave her staring incredulously among the three of them. “Humans are insane. What was that?”
“That was a distraction,” Kelly said miserably. “I had to do something to keep Dickon from confessing we’d all been at the garage when Reg got hurt. It just worked better than I thought it would.” The elevator dinged, warning they’d passed the second floor, and she whispered, “Better hide again. We’re almost there.”
Aerin disappeared, leaving nothing more than a shimmer in the mirrors. Lara stood and drew Kelly to her feet, all three of them briefly reflected before the doors opened. Kelly looked terrible, red nose and swollen eyes clashing with her green scrubs. Lara thought she herself looked a little shocked, but Dafydd was still clearly trying not to laugh. He went so far as to catch Kelly’s hand and bow low over it when they stepped out of the elevator.
“I know I should offer my profound condolences and my sorrow for putting you through that, no matter how unintentionally, but I must instead admit to my deep admiration for your acting skills. I realize some of that was genuine emotion, but I have rarely, in a century of living among mortals, seen such quick-witted melodramatics. You are wasted fitting brassieres, Miss Richards. You should be on the stage.”
The worst of Kelly’s tears had stopped by the time he finished his extravagant compliments. She even managed a sloppy, tiny smile, though she shot a skeptical look at Lara. “Is he blarneying me?”
“He was sincere in every word,” Lara assured her. Kelly laughed shakily and Lara pulled her into a hug, promising “You’ll be all right” again before setting her back and grinning despite herself. “You really are an appallingly good liar, Kel.”
“I’ve gotten much better at it since I met you.” Kelly sniffled, then laughed more fully at Lara’s expression. “I started really thinking about how to use most of the truth while telling lies, after I figured out nobody could lie to you. I mean, that doesn’t work on you, you still know anyway, but it made me a much better liar. Okay. If I go wash my face will I be presentable enough to get into the ICU?”
“You had best be,” Aerin said from nowhere, voice low and threatening. “Emyr’s firstborn grows no less heavy as you stand and perform.”
Kelly squeaked and ran for the bathroom as Lara studied Aerin, curiosity piqued. “Emyr’s firstborn” was a far kinder way to refer to Ioan than the “traitor” Aerin had used earlier. She wondered if the Seelie warrior woman’s thaw would last beyond returning to the Barrow-lands, or if her willingness to accept and help Ioan was merely an artifact of them being strangers together in a strange land.
A nurse came down the hall, wheeling a half-sleeping old woman toward the elevator. Lara scurried out of the way, but the woman reached out as they passed her, grabbing Lara’s wrist and turning a vivid dark gaze on her. “Truth will seek the hardest path, measures that must mend the past.”
Lara’s heart caught in her chest, then hammered again too hard, making her dizzy. “Wo—”
The old woman’s face brightened and she changed her grip, holding Lara’s hand instead. “Breaker who restores the land, keeps the world gates well in hand.”
“Mrs. Moloney, please don’t do that,” the nurse said wearily. She gently unwrapped the old woman’s fingers from Lara’s, offering an apologetic sigh as she did so. “She was a poet in her youth. I’m afraid she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s now and imagines her little rhymes to have some sort of deep meaning. She doesn’t mean any harm.”
“No,” Lara whispered. “No, of course she doesn’t. But you might want to listen to her, nurse. There might be something in what she says, even if it sounds like nonsense.”
The nurse gave her a tired smile. “You’re a good soul, miss. Most people find Mrs. Moloney disturbing. Maybe you should think about a career in nursing.” She wheeled the old woman into the elevator, leaving Lara to massage her palm and stare after them.
“Poets and prophets.” Dafydd took her hand, squeezing it gently as he, too, looked after the old woman. “What do you suppose she meant?”
“I don’t think it’d be called prophecy if it wasn’t cryptic,” Lara said with a faint smile. “But that’s three variants on it now. Oisín did tell me to ask any other prophets I met for a reading. Do you believe in fate, Dafydd?”
“More and more every day,” he said in an odd tone. Lara glanced over to find him watching her intently. A self-deprecating smile played at his lips, but his gaze was serious. Breath rushed out of her and she turned toward him, an arm wrapped around his back and her face hidden in his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she mumbled after a moment. “Thank you for that. My life has been turned upside down. You’ve turned it upside down. But somehow it just takes a look or a smile or a word from you and I find myself believing it’s going to be all right. That all these choices and decisions are the right ones, somehow. And I don’t know what Mrs. Moloney meant, but I think we needed to come here to hear what she had to say. Merrick might have done us more of a favor than he knew.”
“I believe I love you, too,” Dafydd murmured into her hair, and gave her a bright boyish smile as she pulled back, astonished, to gaze up at him. “I’m sorry,” he said without a hint of sincerity. “I could have sworn that was what I just heard you say. Am I wrong?”
“No,” Lara admitted. “No, I think you heard right. I just didn’t know that was what I was saying.”
“A truthseeker uncertain of her words. I have indeed shaken the foundations of the universe.” Dafydd’s smile lit up further as Lara blushed, but he stopped his teasing by kissing her. “Worlds come changed at end of day,” he whispered. “And how they have, Lara. How they have. I had not anticipated this.”
Kelly, brightly, said, “Well, I did. Boy, I leave you alone for two minutes and your whole relationship changes. You can get on with being kissy-faces later. Do I look okay now?”
Lara broke free of Dafydd with a laugh and gave Kelly a once-over before nodding in satisfaction. “You’ll do for someone I haven’t dressed.”
“Lara, if you’d made my scrubs, we’d still be back at my apartment with you working on them. I’m sure they’d be beautiful, but all they needed to be was functional. All right.” Kelly glanced from Lara to Dafydd, then around like she sought the invisible Aerin before dusting her hands together. “Let’s go save Reg.”
By comparison to Reginald Washington, Ioan looked hale and hearty. The detective’s dark skin was ashy blue, healthy color leeched away. An oxygen mask covered half his face, but his eyes were sunken with ill health, and though at least one of the IVs snaked into his veins was saline, he looked dehydrated. Dehydrated and bloated both, Lara thought; his hands were swollen, and his torso was patchy under the hospital gown, suggesting there was still material packed against puncture wounds. Small tubes drained the wounds, and the private room was filled with machinery beeping and the oxygen machine’s rasp.
Kelly stopped inside the door, hands cupped over her mouth. “Oh my God. Can we even move him?”
Aerin set Ioan down in a chair, glamour disrupting as she did so. She rubbed her shoulders as she came to stand over the dying detective, a frown etched between her eyebrows. “He smells of infection. Will he live if we move him?”
“He’ll die if we don’t,” Lara said to both of them, grateful she would be understood. Truth made her response sharp, and she wished it away, knowing it would do no good. “Aerin, I know you’re not a healer, but is there any way you can use your magic to stabilize him a little? Stone is very stable …”
The Seelie woman pursed her lips, intrigued. “I would never have thought of such a use. But the earth here is very far away, Truthseeker, and iron spikes the space between us. I’m not sure if I can work a holding magic within these walls.”
“Maybe set a spell to trigger when we enter the Barrow-lands, then. Something to link his strength to the land, the way you linked mine to it through the horse.”
“The horses.” Aerin focused on Lara abruptly. “Will we abandon them, then? We cannot bring this
Lara dropped her chin to her chest and swore. “We’ll have to come back for them later.”
“Will the time wrench us astray? Will the horses be lost to us, if we travel without them?” Aerin asked Dafydd.
He said “No” absently as he traced a door-sized rectangle in the air. “So long as I open the worldwalking spell on both sides myself, it should be fine. It’s not meant to throw travelers out of time when properly worked.”
“Lara? What’re they talking about?” Kelly pushed away from the door and edged forward to grasp Lara’s hand tightly.
